R...Rajkumar

Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Sonu Sood, Ashish Vidyarthi, Asrani
Directed by Prabhudeva
Rating: *

Instant recall for R...Rajkumar comes from its songs. Forget their nonsense lyrics and mediocre tunes, Gandi baat, Saree ke fall sa and Maari maari are confirmed, chartbusting earworms. Like them or leave them.

Songs aside, the film itself infuriates and exasperates, especially the way it denigrates its women. There is the loutish stalker hero whose lips automatica­lly get puckered into a silly kiss, complete with a foul sound, the minute he spots the heroine. The chant ‘Romeo Ki Jai’ plays on in the background. Strictly adhering to the timeworn tradition of Bollywood, he chases her, teases her, treats her like a game and then rises up to protect her from the villain. In a nutshell, he never sees her as an equal partner but an object he has to possess. She does little other than preen, prance, dance and eventually submit to her pursuer. The entrenched patriarchy and blatant orthodoxy of the film are appalling. One scene underlines the regressive mindset of the makers. You have a cop raping a girl in the police station. Cut to the villain being bathed by a woman. Need we expend more words?

Rajkumar (Shahid Kapoor) works for drug lord Shivraj (Sonu Sood) in a village from nowhere. He endears himself to the boss by taking on his arch-rival Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi). To add to the confusion, there’s an even bigger drug baron, Taaka, operating out of Malaysia. Problems begin to emerge when Rajkumar falls for Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha), as does Shivraj. To make matters worse, Chanda turns out to be Parmar’s niece.

The comedy, the dialoguebaazi, the song ’n dance, the blood and gore are all incessantly over the top and loud to allow anything subtler to slip into the narrative. Some scenes play to the gallery and bring the house down, like Shahid saving a boozard stuck inside his burning home. But much of the film is just “been there, done that”, nothing that you wouldn’t have seen earlier.

Shahid sprouts lots of facial hair and dances and acts as sincerely as he can. But it’s the kind of film and character that could have been played by anyone, from Akshay Kumar to Ajay Devgan. Sonakshi reconfirms her status as the lucky mascot and romantic diversion in overly macho films. Sonu gamely tries to add shots of comedy to his villainy and mouths lines like ‘mere moonh mat lagna, main sehat ke liye haanikaarak hoon’, ‘Naamard bana ke tere saamne iske saath suhaagraat manaunga’. Vidyarthi utterly wastes himself, while veteran comedian Asrani allows yet another undignified cameo to be heaped upon himself. An uncultured, crude film that, ironically, could well emerge as Shahid’s biggest grosser ever. Meanwhile, am still wondering about the title. Why the ‘R...’? Does it stand for Rambo or Romeo? Why not just ‘Rajkumar’?